African Languages and Societies Commons^™

Assessing Risk Of Violence In Caucasian And African-American Male Forensic Patients, Brandy Lynn Herriott

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

"This Was A Man!": A Memorial Tribute To Felix Emeka Okeke-Ezigbo (October 14, 1944-June 25, 2012), Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

A memorial tribute to one of the leading members of the the Biafran war generation of Nsukka poets. Dr. Felix Emeka Okeke-Ezigbo, October 14, 1944 to June 25, 2012.

The Hegemony Of English In South African Education, Kelsey E. Figone

Scripps Senior Theses

The South African Constitution recognizes 11 official languages and protects an individual’s right to use their mother-tongue freely. Despite this recognition, the majority of South African schools use English as the language of learning and teaching (LOLT). Learning in English is a struggle for many students who speak indigenous African languages, rather than English, as a mother-tongue, and the educational system is failing its students. This perpetuates inequality between different South African communities in a way that has roots in the divisions of South Africa’s past. An examination of the power of language and South Africa’s experience with colonialism and …

Hear My Voice: An Examination Of The Views Of Parents Who Are Raising Children Of African American Descent, Chavez Maurice Phelps

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have demonstrated that children who attend early childhood education programs benefit academically and socially (National Institute for Early Education Research, 2003). However, other researchers have shown that African American students may still lag behind their counterparts when they enter school (National Center for Education Statistics ([NCES], 2004). To explain this phenomenon, scholars and practitioners have relied on deficit theories, such as Ruby Payne’s (2005) culture of poverty theory or John Ogbu’s (1992) oppositional culture identity theory, which shift the blame solely on the child or their parents. However, there are other researchers who have stressed the importance of examining …

Censuring The Praise Of Alienation: Interstices Of Ante-Alienation In Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease, And Arrow Of God, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

Interrogating Abiola Irele’s largely unchallenged praise of alienation, this essay is bold and insightful in returning to Chinua Achebe’s African trilogy to examine the subtler, equally dangerous agent of externality: ante-alienation, or social alienation within traditional African culture, which precedes race-based, colonial alienation. This ante-alienation challenges Négritude’s paradisiacal view of Africa and raises questions about Africans always being happiest with themselves within their traditional culture.

African Americans Perceptions Of The “N-Word” In The Context Of Racial Identity Attitudes, Keya Wiggins

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The “N-word” has been a pop-culture topic of interest which has fueled many heated discussions within the African American community. Given the history of the word nigger in America, the use of the word nigga among some African Americans may cause confusion among those who do not understand the phenomenon of African Americans‟ perceptions of the “N-word.” The present research was conducted to explore the phenomenon of African Americans‟ perceptions of both the words nigger and nigga in the context of racial identity attitudes. A primarily qualitative embedded mixed method model was utilized to gather information about feelings of group …

Understanding Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers' Identity Construction And Transformation In The English-Speaking Community: A Closer Look At Past, Present, And Future, Shu-Chun Tseng

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Building on Kachru‟s (2005) diagram of World Englishes and Norton‟s (2000) theoretical conception of identity, the researcher acknowledges that each Non-Native English Speaking Teacher (NNEST) comes to the English-speaking community with a different variety of Englishes. Each believes in various cultural values and norms, and his or her identity is an ongoing process that can be impacted when he or she is immersed in different contexts. Using a qualitative approach, this study examined the way NNESTs construct their self-perceptions of English Language Teaching (ELT) professionalism based on social and educational experiences in their countries. In addition, the study examined how …

The Muse Of Nigerian Poetry And The Coming Of Age Of Nigerian Literature, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

African Language Publishing For Children In South Africa: Challenges For Translators, Viv Edwards, Jacob Marriote Ngwaru

Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

The commitment to multilingualism embedded in the 1996 South African Constitution has wide ranging implications for many aspects of education. This paper focuses on the dearth of teaching and learning materials in African languages required to deliver effective bilingual education, and on the potential role of translation in offering solutions for this problem. Drawing on an analysis of currently available African language books for children and interviews with educators, writers, publishers, translators and organisations concerned with book promotion, it explores issues which have emerged as critical for both the quality and availability of translation. Attention is drawn to the ways …

‘Up These Hills To The Mountain Top’: Memories Of 'The Golden Sun' In Michael Echeruo's War Poems (Distanced), Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

One of the leading voices among the first generation of post-independence African modernist poets of the twentieth-century, Michael J. C. Echeruo's second collection of poetry, Distanced (1975), is, unlike his better-known first collection, Mortality (1968), characterized by direct phrasing and open accessibility—in terms of imagery and other signifiers—to the general reader. Composed within the first four years (1970-74) after the end of the Biafran war of independence of 1967-1970, the nineteen lyrics that make up this collection look back with extraordinary candor and passion into the future of the Biafran experience, especially with regard to the problems of reintegration into …

'Clearing The Forest': Critical Commentary On Gabriel Okara’S Postwar Ode, ‘The Dreamer’, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

The present essay is essentially a preliminary exploration of a previously unexplored territory of postcolonial, modernist African poetics—Gabriel Okara’s venture into the appropriation of the signs of the classical and latter-day European ode as a vehicle for both a satirical interrogation of the performance of the postcolonial civilian and military elite the dysfunctional Nigerian federation after its war against Biafra and for an understanding of the possibility of heroic regeneration in the face of the depth of , bordering on existentialist , into which the nation has been reduced by the post-civil war triumph of disorder in the hands of …

Christopher Okigbo’S Intentions: A Critical Edition Of A Previously Unpublished Interview By Ivan Van Sertima, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

This is a critical edition with emendations of lacunae from indelible inkblots and termite activity of an interview with Christopher Okigbo conducted in the mid-1960s by Ivan van Sertima, the distinguished Caribbean-American anthropologist, linguist, literary critic, Afrocentric historiographer, and founding-editor of The Journal of African Civilizations (New Brunswick, NJ), who passed away on May 29, 2009, at the age of 74. It was discovered in January 2006 among Okigbo’s unpublished papers, which I catalogued at the invitation of the Christopher Okigbo Foundation, in Brussels, Belgium, now part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

‘The Mystic Drum’: Critical Commentary On Gabriel Okara’S Love Lyrics, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Structurally, Okara’s love lyric, “The Mystic Drum,” evinces a tripartite ritual pattern of initiation from innocence through intimacy to experience. By comparison to the way of Zen as manifested in the experience of Zen Master, Ch’ing Yuän Wei-hsin, this pattern resolves itself into an emotional and epistemological journey from conventional knowledge (born of innocence) through more intimate knowledge (born of closer apperception of reality) to substantial knowledge (born of experience). The substantial knowledge born of experience empowers the lover to understand that beneath the surface attractiveness of what we know very well (such as the women we love) may lie …

'The White Man Laughs': Commentary On The Satiric Dramatic Monologues Of Gabriel Okara, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Examined in the present article are two early satiric lyrics of Gabriel Okara—“Once Upon a Time” and “He Laughed and Laughed and Laughed”—which are the products of the postcolonial cultural war environment in which the issues of modernity, alterity (otherness or difference) and afro-authenticity implicated in Achebe’s ripostes on the bigotry of the colonialist critic were central. The tone of this discourse amongst leading African intelligentsia was set in the 1930’s and 1940’s by four fellow south-eastern Nigerian writers in their semi-autobiographical blueprints for African cultural emancipation—Renascent Africa ((1937)) by Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904–1996); British and Axis Aims in Africa (1942) …

‘The Monstrous Anger Of The Guns’: Critical Commentary On The War Poems Of Gabriel Okara, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Throughout the Biafran War of Independence from Nigeria (1967-1970), Gabriel Okara remained a committed Biafran. But he was neither an iconoclastic secessionist (determined to wantonly wreck any well-founded order, including the subaltern state of Nigeria) nor a romantic revolutionary (dreaming of a postcolonial African utopia rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the failed postcolonial state of Nigeria), he was a Biafran at a higher level of philosophical and humanist reasoning as eloquently argued throughout his war lyrics discussed in the present paper, whose themes include: commitment, nationalism and pacifism as they pertain to his Biafran experience; modern warfare …

A Comparison Of The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, And Child And Adolescent Taxon Scale: Predictive Utility And Cross Cultural Generalizability, Micheal Bruce Lister

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) is a widely utilized measure for estimating the risk of violent reoffending among forensic populations. However, completing the VRAG can be a lengthy process as it requires entering scores from a second test, the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), which must be administered separately and requires hours to complete. In order to reduce scoring time, the authors of the VRAG have developed a brief checklist, the Child and Adolescent Taxon Scale (CATS), which can be used in place of the PCL-R as a more efficient method of assessing psychopathy (Quinsey et al., 2004). Previous research …

Before It Rains, Veronica O. Parkman

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not parish but have everlasting life." Contemporary Christian literature is becoming first choice in public libraries and bookstores throughout the country. From novels about end-time prophesy to autobiographies of world-renowned pastors, works written for and about Christians have reached an all-time high. Before it Rains is indeed, according to the scriptural definition of salvation found in the King James Version of the bible, a contemporary Christian novel; the characters must go through the biblical process of accepting Jesus Christ as their …

Achebe's Igbo Poems: Oral Traditional Resources And The Process Of ‘Deschooling’ In Modern African Poetics, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

The present paper examines the diction, imagery and other features of language and style in Chinua Achebe's two Igbo poems ("Uno Onwu Okigbo" and "Akuko Kpulu Uwa Iru"). Disposing of charges of plagiarism levied on Achebe on account of his modeling of the poems on well-known Igbo folk songs, the paper argues that what is rather involved in the compositional process is a process of "deschooling" from the strictures of European or Eurocentric conventions of versification. It concludes that a process of "deschooling" of this kind is one way in which African writers can begin their journey back with undivided …

Ogbuu-Kay! The "After Laugh" Lingers On, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Memorial Tribute to Ogbu Uke Kalu, 1942-2009.

The African Roots Of Michael Echeruo’S Poetry: A Close-Reading Of ‘Sophia’, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

This paper argues that, contrary to widespread opinion, the poetry of first generation, postcolonial, modernist Nigerian poet, Michael J. C. Echeruo, draws some of its core and defining tropes from indigenous African system of thought and symbolism. The much maligned early poem "Sophia" is subjected to line-by-line close-reading to illustrate this argument. The analysis suggests that, as a matter of fact, "Sophia" can be read as a portal to Echeruo's poetic corpus as a whole.

Laying Bare The Sins Of The Father: Exploring White Fathers In Post-Apartheid Literature, Casey M. Reck

CMC Senior Theses

This Thesis is an exploration of white fathers in three post-apartheid novels: Mark Behr's The Smell of Apples, Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun, and J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace. By examining the link between private white hegemonic masculinity and the apartheid government, the Thesis analyzes the transitional process as these men try to adopt less authoritative identities.

Stressful Life Events And Interpersonal, Religious, And Spiritual Changes, Paul Murdock

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Survivors of stressful life events and traumatic experiences often report positive psychological changes “...as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances” (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004, p. 1). Three often reported areas of growth include having a greater appreciation for life in general, new priorities, and an increased significance placed on interpersonal, spiritual or religious issues. Despite reports of positive changes, the literature on stress-related growth (SRG) is inconclusive as to whether SRG is an illusion or represents actual change. For example, no studies to date appear to use longitudinal data, objective indictors, or behavioral measures of change. …

Remembering Adiele Afigbo (Memorial Tribute To Professor Adiele Ebereegbulam Afigbo), 1938-2009, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Memorial tribute to Professor Adiele Eberegbulem Afigbo (born 22 November 1937; died 9 March 2009) focussing on his achievement as a postcolonial historian and historiographer, tutored by the legendary pioneer in the field, Professor Kenneth Dike, whose applications of the tools of oral historiography opened new vistas in the study of the history of the Igbo and their neighbors.

Christopher Okigbo At Work: Towards A Pilot Study And Critical Edition Of His Previously Unpublished Poems, 1957-1967, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

The objectives of the present paper are two-fold. The first is to produce a critical edition of the complete corpus of the previously unpublished papers of Christopher Okigbo (1930-1967), who is today widely acknowledged as by far the most outstanding postcolonial, Anglophone, African, modernist poet of the 20th century. The second is to offer a pilot critical interpretation of the previously unknown poems in the corpus and to ascertain their place in the Okigbo canon. In 2007 these papers became the first corpus of unpublished works to be nominated and accepted into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The …

Joshua, This Is Your Story: Tribute To Joshua Uzoigwe, 1946-2005 (With Three Poems By The Deceased From Nsukka Harvest, 1972), Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

Renowned Musicologist and poet, Professor Joshua Uzoigwe, former head of the Music Department at the University of Uyo, joined the ancestors last month. Described as "a music educator, composer, performer and musicologist [and as someone who] directed several musical concerts in which he featured his own works and works by other modern Nigerian composers." It was also said that "his intention was to create an awareness of this music in an intellectual environment such as Obafemi Awolowo University and in Nigeria at large."

Reprinted below are a tribute to Professor Uzoigwe by our ALA colleague and friend, Professor Chukwuma Azuonye …

Cultural-Competency Training For School-Based Mental Health Service Providers, Natasha Lian Smith

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Literature on cultural competence has primarily developed in the fields of counseling psychology and counselor education. The field of school psychology has responded to the increased focus of cultural competency by providing recommended skills needed to provide psychological services in schools to diverse individuals and groups. Currently, research in effective cultural competency training has primarily focused on graduate training programs. This study extends the literature on cultural competency training by developing a training model that is appropriate for professionals who are already working in the field. This study first evaluated the impact of a needs assessment on the preparation of …

Igbo Folk Idioms In Caribbean Phrase, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

This paper analyses a corpus of phrases from Jamaican and other Caribbean folk speech with a view to ascertaing their possible Igbo provenance. There seems to be an overwhelming match in terms of morphology and meaning between these Jamaican phrases and some common Igbo idioms. It is however worthy of note that the matching of Igbo and Caribbean or Black American idioms, no matter how persuasive the results may be, cannot produce conclusive evidence of Igbo presence in any particular area or among any particular population sample. Studies of mother-tongue interference in various African Englishes and comparative studies of the …

Ijelè: Welcoming The King Of Modern African Letters To Massachusetts, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

A welcome address presented to Professor Chinua Achebe, novelist, poet, essayist, cultural philosopher, social activist, and Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in the Science Auditorium, University of Massachusetts at Boston, at a University Forum marking the Inauguration of JoAnn Gora as the 6th Chancellor, on September 26, 2002.

Igbo As An Endangered Language, Chukwuma Azuonye

Africana Studies Faculty Publication Series

At first sight, the question "Is Igbo an endangered language," would appear to be grossly misplaced, since the survival of the language seems to be well guaranteed by its status both as one of the three main languages of Nigeria and one of the major languages of literature, education, and commerce in Africa. Furthermore, with its well over 25 million native speakers who live in one of the most densely populated areas of the world with an exceptionally high fertility rate and a traditional world view and culture that promote the raising of large families, it would appear that there …

Cross Racial Preferences In Viewing Sexually Explicit Material: A Comparison Between African-American And Caucasian Males, Boyd Randal Horton

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated that extent to which the race of actors in an erotic video affected sexual arousal in African-American and Caucasian heterosexual males. It was hypothesized that the two racial groups would be significantly more sexually aroused while watching their respective homoethnic erotic video. The hypothesis was grounded in the modeling effects of Bandura's Social Leaning Theory (1977), the Matching Hypothesis (1982) and worldview differences between African-Americans and Caucasians (Baldwin and Bell, 1985). Thirty-four African-American and Caucasian males were shown homoethnic and non-homoethnic erotic videos while penile circumference, systolic and diastolic blood pressures, and self-report ratings of sexual …